Ban Hegins Bird Shoot, Lawsuit Asks

Humane officials, with the backing of a national animal rights organization, filed a lawsuit yesterday to end the annual Labor Day pigeon shoot in Hegins Township.

The suit claims the shoot violates the state's cruelty to animals code because wounded birds suffer.

"This is an excellent chance to finally end this incredibly cruel practice in Pennsylvania," said Heidi Prescott, national director for the Maryland-based Fund for Animals Inc. "Hopefully, this will be the final nail in the coffin of the pigeon shoot."

Fund for Animals is supporting the lawsuit with attorneys.

Christopher Tobash, who helps arrange the shoot along with many people from the rural community, said the pigeons are treated as humanely as possible. He also said protesters were seeking publicity, noting the media learned of the suit before organizers.

"It seems funny that the papers got the suit before the people in Hegins did," he said.

The event, called the Fred Coleman Memorial Shoot, has been held for the last 60 years in the rural township. People pay a fee to shoot pigeons that are released from boxes. Many birds are killed. Others die when trapper boys collect the wounded birds and wring their necks or bang them on the ground.

The shoot, organized by the Labor Day Committee, has attracted protesters from across the county. Last year's shoot was relatively calm with 10 arrests. One protester was arrested. The rest were spectators.

The 1992 shoot was wilder with 114 arrests, as protesters and shoot supporters confronted each other all day.

As the protests grew larger, more people participated in the shoot. The money raised goes to improve Hegins' park.

The suit was filed by Doylestown attorney Richard H. Elliott in Schuylkill County Court on behalf of Keith Mohler of Farm Sanctuary of Pennsylvania, Kathy Hecker of Animal Friends and Clayton Hulsizer of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

None of the plaintiffs is local. Mohler lives in Lancaster County, Hecker in Allegheny County and Hulsizer in Philadelphia County.

The suit says of the 6,000 pigeons released, about 2,000 are wounded. The Labor Day Committee does not give the wounded pigeons food, drink or care in violation of state law, the suit says.

The suit also says that trapper boys collect the wounded birds and kill them by wringing their necks, bashing them on the ground or suffocating them in a pile of dead pigeons. That also violates cruelty to animals laws because the actions are not common methods of euthanasia, the suit says.

Tobash said organizers are as humane as possible with the animals.

"I come from a farm community," he said. "We know very well what animals are about and what it takes to properly dispose of them. We don't want to be cruel to them worse than anyone else."

Tobash said the dead birds are made into fertilizer.

Elliott, who does work for an umbrella organization for 35 humane organizations in Pennsylvania, said he expects a judge to hear the case before Labor Day.

Attorney Sidney B. Maddock of Maryland and attorney Katherine A. Meyer of Washington, D.C., will help argue the case. Those attorneys work for the Fund for Animals.

Prescott said Fund for Animals has asked state police to enforce cruelty to animals law at past shoots. She said police have not responded to the request.